Several Ramsey HS football players jumped into action to assist a woman who was injured in a car crash on the Garden State Parkway on June 16.
Several Ramsey High School football players jumped into action to assist a woman who was injured in a car crash on the Garden State Parkway on June 16.
Mason Gonzalez, Trevor Broking, Luke Filippone and Liam Mueller pulled over to help a woman on the GSP northbound in Woodcliff Lake whose car was facing south and had a guardrail smashed through the front windshield.
“I just wanted to help this person as soon as possible,” said Gonzalez, a senior. "Because when we saw it, we all knew it was a terrible crash.”
Gonzalez and his teammates were in multiple cars at about 8:50 p.m. and headed to a celebratory meal in Montvale after winning the South Bergen Shootout 7-on-7 tournament at Becton High School.
When traffic slowed because of the crash, the players said they exchanged text messages and quickly agreed to pull over when they saw the mangled car.
Gonzalez and Broking said a couple people had already pulled over and a man in his mid-20s had an emergency hammer that he used to break open the back right window and front right window. Filippone, a junior, used an emergency hammer to break the glass of the back left window and open the door, and injured his hand.
“I asked her if she was OK, and she looked at me with her eyes wide as can be and she nodded her head slowly,” Gonzalez said. “I stood up and was like, ‘She’s clearly in shock, but she’s awake.'”
The players did not attempt to move the woman, who they estimated to be in her late teens or early twenties.
“The car wasn’t on fire, and the car was stable, so there was no reason to move her, just in case she had a spinal injury or something,” said Broking, a senior. “You don’t want to move them in that situation, and it would be better to just wait for the paramedics to come.”
State troopers arrived a couple minutes later, Gonzalez and Broking said, and paramedics arrived several minutes after that. The woman was removed from the car.
Gonzalez and Broking said pulling over to help was a no-brainer. And the experience of working together as a team came into play.
“We all thought ‘If it was me, or someone in that spot, someone else on our team, or someone else we cared about, you would want someone to help them,'” said Gonzalez, who plans to pursue a career in law enforcement. “So I figured, ‘Why not help them?’”
“It was like a tragedy, it was surreal,” Broking said. “Being able to get out with my team and go over and help made it easier for everyone to work together, because of all of our practices working together. It was almost natural to be able to work with them.”
Ramsey has been a winning program, posting a 32-14 record so far this decade. The Rams went 7-3 last season, winning a first-round playoff game, and will be ranked in the North Jersey Public Top 20 when it is released later this summer.
“I’m proud of them for what they accomplished on the field, but I’m even more proud of the kind of young men they’re becoming,” Rams veteran coach Adam Baeira said. “This is what we hope sports teaches - leadership, character, and stepping up when it matters most. And they did that.”
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Ramsey NJ football players help rescue woman from car crash
Category: General Sports
